Author's notes:
First off, disclaimers, bla bla bla, I don't own Hannibal Lecter or Clarice Starling or Ardelia Mapp or the FBI or the FF.Net server or any character in other fanfic or the number 2. I do own Susana Alvarez Lecter, Lisa Starling, and anyone I didn't borrow. Well, Lisa is kind of a tribute to someone special. Her name, anyway.
Next up. Some personal things I wanted to say but am too lazy to email people separately.
To Chameleon302: As always, your unflagging support helps keep things going. Thank you. That's all I can say, really. Well, wait. I can also say that if I do end up in a casserole in one of your fics that Susana has multiple slots on her victims dance card.
To Screaming Lamb: I also appreciate you as a constant reader of my fics. And keep up 'Following Orders'. You're better than you seem to think. Is Susana going to be 'nicer' in this one? As Bachman Turner Overdrive said: B-b-baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet.
To Lauralye who does not sign in: First off, you win the Scooby Doo award for solving the mystery in 'Whoever Fights Monsters' long before it was revealed. Secondly, Clarice's family will indeed continue to be explored here.
To Samantha Bridges: Wow, an author who seems to share my predilection for length (though I'm getting shorter) and who is, in her own way, as demented as I am. That's a compliment, now. Of all the fic authors here, your writing style is closest to Thomas Harris's.
To everyone who asked for more gore: Be careful what you ask for. You're gonna get it. Starting with this chapter. As in weak stomachs may want to check out now.
As always, thank you for reading and reviewing. I try to return the favor as much as I can We now return you to your regularly scheduled story already in progress..
The men seemed surprised to hear her announcement. A moment of silence reigned in the room. Finally, an older man in a gray suit broke the silence. His thin, pinched features twisted into an expression of disbelief.
"Pardon me, Agent…Starling, but aren't you a bit young to be Clarice Starling's cousin?"
Lisa consulted her chart. This was Peter DeGraff, Deputy Chief of Behavioral Science under Chief Quincy.
"No, sir," she explained.
"Agent Starling isn't lying, Peter," Chief Quincy interjected. The two men stared at each other. An unspoken rivalry was palpable between them.
"I'm not saying she's lying," DeGraff said. "I'm just asking--,"
"Well, you don't need to," Chief Quincy said angrily.
"Sirs, please. It's all right," Lisa said smoothly. "It's a fair question and I don't mind answering it."
Her diplomatic move quelled the tension between the two. Once peace reigned around the table, Lisa continued.
"Clarice's father, John Starling, is my father's half-brother. His—John's, I mean—mother died when he was fourteen years old. He was sixteen years older than my father. And my father was married once before he married my mother. He was fifty or so when I was born."
The men seemed satisfied with the explanation. Lisa reached down unobtrusively under the desk to scratch her nyloned calf.
I thought if I was an FBI agent I wouldn't have to wear these damn things to work, she thought.
"Agent Starling, I'm sure you're well trained," DeGraff said calmly, "but I do have to ask what you're doing here. The FBI is not a medieval family. Your relation to…former Agent Starling…doesn't qualify you for anything."
"I have a master's degree in psychology," Lisa said in equally calm tones. "I know I am not qualified to join Behavioral Sciences immediately, sir. No one is. I was asked to be here, sir."
"That's right, and I asked her to be here," Chief Quincy said gruffly. "Stand down, Peter."
Peter DeGraff closed his mouth, but his disdain was obvious.
"Susana Alvarez has never known any of her family outside of her mother and father. Clarice's father and Agent Starling's were never close. But we believe that if we publicize Agent Starling's involvement in the case, we may be able to draw Susana's attention."
DeGraff rolled his eyes. "It's a heck of a gamble. And we can try it, but we should have real agents working this case, not just Cousin Lisa."
Chief Quincy's eyes flared with anger. He pointed at Deputy Chief DeGraff.
"We will have plenty of agents assigned to SUSDOOVER," he said sharply. "And you expect to be referred to as Deputy Chief DeGraff, do you not?"
"Yes," DeGraff said reticently.
"Then please refer to her as 'Agent Starling', not 'Cousin Lisa'."
An unpleasant silence ruled the room. The man seated next to Deputy Chief DeGraff cleared his throat.
"Chief Quincy wouldn't have asked Agent Starling to be here if he didn't think she would add value to the investigation somehow," he said. He smiled. Behind his glasses, his eyes were bright blue. Lisa consulted her list and discovered this to be Ralph Lima, a profiler in Behavioral Sciences. She had heard his name before. Behind the blue eyes and grandfatherly mien lurked a mind that was both razor sharp and well experienced in predicting an UNSUB's next move.
"And Agent Starling's last name does not constitute a scarlet letter," concluded Chief Quincy. Lisa smiled briefly, grateful that he had stood up for her. Her last name had indeed been a stumbling block for her in her brief career. Memories at the FBI were long, and Clarice's liberation of Hannibal Lecter so many years ago was not viewed kindly. "As we were, ladies and gentlemen."
The meeting continued. The plan was to publicize Agent Starling as part of the investigation. Chief Quincy had a few sources in the National Tattler. Deputy Chief DeGraff was silent and sullen through most of the meeting, only stopping to ask if Susana Alvarez actually read the Tattler. That was a point Lisa had to give him. The FBI had managed to obtain Susana's hotel and dining receipts from her first visit to the United States. Room service, expensive wine, and a brief shopping expedition to Ballston Common Mall. Two thousand dollars in clothing. Seven hundred fifty dollars in lingerie at Victoria's Secret. That was more money than Lisa Starling had ever spent on lingerie in her entire life. Damnably, the FBI still had not been able to come up with a single scrap of paper proving that Susana Alvarez Lecter had ever been in Chicago.
But someone with that sort of tastes and money probably did not read the Tattler. All they could do was try and wheedle a big headline and front-page article and hope it got her attention. Then again, the New York Times was not willing to print an article written exclusively for the FBI.
When the meeting broke up, Lisa Starling scurried back to the tiny cubicle she had been temporarily given in the depth of Behavioral Science's dungeons. Quincy, DeGraff, and Lima stayed behind for a moment.
"I still think this is stupid," Peter DeGraff grumbled. "You don't even know if Lecter's going to take the bait."
"Huh? Oh, you mean Alvarez."
"Whatever. If Lecter's her father then her last name ought to be Lecter. She acts enough like him."
"It's a gamble," Chief Quincy allowed, "but it's worthwhile. If she sees 'Agent Starling on the case' on a headline she might grab at it."
"And do what?" DeGraff said. "Only thing she'll do is make a beeline for Cousin Li—Agent Starling and kill her. You really want to throw a kid fresh out of the Academy up against a killer like Susana Lecter?"
Chief Quincy, who had been an agent himself when a kid fresh out of the Academy interviewed a killer named Lecter, shrugged.
"We'll make sure she has adequate backup," he said.
"I think it's a bad idea. You're going to have a dead kid on your conscience is what I think," DeGraff grumbled. "Susana Lecter already whacked an FBI agent who had two commendations for bravery on the street. And didn't we have an FBI agent disappear ten or so years ago out of Argentina? Isn't she from Argentina? Your beloved kid is going to end up on a table somewhere being Susana Lecter's appetizer."
"Peter, look. I am chief here. This is how we're doing it."
"Don't be so hard on her, DeGraff," said Agent Lima. "She's a smart cookie."
Peter DeGraff scowled. He could not think about his immediate, visceral reaction to Lisa Starling. He just knew that he did not like the idea at all.
"Women don't belong in law enforcement," he said. "They don't have the guts for it."
…
Ray Herman was quite contented with life.
It had been a few years since he moved from Minneapolis to New York City. Although part of him hated the city and always would, he could appreciate what it meant for him – the big time, the big bucks. He had his radio show, and instead of reaching a few thousand paltry listeners, he had thirty thousand watts blasting him well into Connecticut and New Jersey. On some days, he had heard, the big transmitter atop the Empire State Building could send his voice all the way to Boston, Massachusetts.
Ray Herman was a radio talk-show host, and his show consisted mostly of his diatribes against liberals, the poor, Democrats, other races, and whoever dared call his show to defend them. Radio remained popular in 2025, for the simple reason that cars still came with radios. Millions of listeners tuned in to hear him defend the sacred rights of the white American male.
Had that been it, Ray Herman would have been no more than a conservative talk-show host, nor would he have ever left Minneapolis with his show. But Ray Herman was a rare find: a highly intelligent man who espoused the tenets of the radical right. Not only was he abusive to his callers, but he picked them apart with his razor-sharp mind. Many of the 'pinko liberals' who attempted to debate him made the mistake of assuming that he was a country bumpkin with no real intellect. They were wrong. Ray Herman was bright, persuasive, and fast on his mental feet.
His greatest moment on the air had been a debate with a professor of African-American studies from Harvard University. In a heated, vicious debate, he had ripped into her defense of affirmative action, claiming that discriminating in favor of minorities was no more morally superior than discriminating against them. A sizable chunk of New York City had agreed in a poll that he had won the debate.
A good chunk of the white, male population of New York loved his show. They thrilled to hear him publicly denounce policies and ideas that they had quietly resented all their lives. They cheered him as he took down high and mighty politicians and shredded liberals on his show.
They did not know that he often had women in the studio with him, and most of them would not have downgraded their opinion of him if they had. The women Ray Herman preferred in the studio were professionals, and it was part of their professional code to not disclose their presence. After all, Ray Herman was a married man with kids, on the air to stand up for the regular working Joe who wanted to score the good job and send his kids to college.
He sat down in the DJ booth and sprawled out in his chair. He'd worked on his speech last night, and it was good, he thought. It was five-thirty, and most of New York's workers were headed home. He thought about how many car radios his voice was coming from as he spoke.
"Tonight," he began, "I want to talk about foreigners. Now America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, but that doesn't mean we have to let in every last guy from Outer Franistan. No! America's first responsibility is to Americans, to the people already here."
As his voice echoed through the speakers, the security guard outside sat at his own desk. He was bored. His boredom was alleviated by the sight of a young woman entering the studio. She wore a woven sleeveless top, a leather miniskirt, black stockings, elbow length gloves, and high heels. Over her arm was slung a large purse. The security guard shifted his bulk in the chair and grinned.
"Afternoon, darling," he said. "Suppose you're here to…umm…see Mr. Herman."
"You know it," Susana Alvarez Lecter said, and gave him a sexy grin. Internally, she was annoyed. She was grateful that her father could not see her dressed this way. Her outfit would have given him a much more painful and quick heart attack. Whoever thought she was a monster ought to meet the man – and it had to be a man – who invented the five-inch stiletto-heeled pump, she thought.
"How about you warm up with me?" he leered.
Susana considered. She had scoped out the studio for a few days before, dressed as a cleaning woman. She knew that Herman had a fair amount of yapping about minorities and foreigners to do before he switched to the news feed for the fifteen minutes or so he usually used for his interludes with women. Besides, she had to get this fat guy out of the way anyway.
"Sure," she said. "I'll warm up with you. Why not?"
The security guard's eyes lit up. He maneuvered his large body out of the chair and around the desk.
"Holy shit," he grinned. He seemed rather like a man who had just been told he had won the lottery. Susana wasn't surprised. "One of you finally agreed."
"Open up your pants," Susana suggested. "Let's do it right on the desk."
Eagerly, he complied, his eyes drinking in her body all the while. Susana tried not to stare at him once he did. God wasn't very kind to you, was he, she thought. She slipped off her shoes, and put down her bag. She squatted and smiled up at him. The security guard looked down at her, his eyes gleaming in piggy excitement. Susana reached back and plucked the Harpy from where it was clipped to the waistband of her skirt.
She struck quickly, and where it would hurt the most. The Harpy was wickedly sharp, and Susana knew exactly what she meant to cut. The security guard's face changed from one of sexual tension to extreme pain. Susana neatly caught her severed prize in her left hand, stood, and pivoted. The Harpy described a tight, deadly arc which ended in the security guard's stomach.
Usually, it was easy to kill someone like this. The security guard was heavier than most, and there was a lot of fat to muscle past in order to reach the sensitive viscera. But the Harpy was sharp and Susana was strong. The guard died with a stupid look of fear and pain on his face.
Susana sat him back in his chair and arranged him so that it seemed he was sleeping at his desk. The blood would eventually give it away, but Susana did not plan on being here much longer anyway. She washed off her arm in the bathroom and proceeded into the DJ booth for her date with the illustrious Ray Herman.
Susana had first heard him in the back of her limo while riding from the airport to her hotel. She had been fiddling with the radio, looking for something interesting, and come into the middle of one of his diatribes about foreigners. She had listened to it for a while, her face growing darker and darker as he attacked a few callers who dared opine that immigration to the U.S. should not be curtailed.. He was very, very rude, she thought. And Susana's father had taught her well what the penalties for rudeness were.
In the back of the limo, she had envisioned a well-fed older man in a jacket and tie. A well-fed man, a man who might be tending to fat but wouldn't look obese the way the security guard had. A man who looked big, rather than fat. A man who had privilege and who meant to guard it. It was a common mistake. There are plenty of three-hundred-pound disk jockeys with whip-thin voices.
Ray Herman was a small man with a thin face. He had a valiantly struggling mustache. His hair was black, and curly. His skin was swarthy. Her first thought was that he was indio. She remembered this was the U.S. and supposed he could be part Italian or something. But he could have walked down any street in Buenos Aires completely unnoticed. Susana observed with some surprise that the champion of conservatism had long hair in back.
He reminded her of nothing so much as a rat or a mouse. The mustache wiggled at her like mouse whiskers. He seemed to be afraid of her, almost. As he should be, Susana thought. No, wait. Not yet.
"You're not the regular girl," he said calmly.
"No," Susana agreed. "She wasn't feeling well. She asked me to stand in for her." Technically, Susana's first statement was not a lie. The regular prostitute had indeed not been feeling well. She was not feeling well because Susana had waylaid her at her apartment building and slashed open her stomach. Susana had discovered a bizarre looking growth on one of the woman's ovaries. It could have been ovarian cancer, but it hardly mattered now.
"We've got five minutes until the commercials are over," he said timidly. "Can we get started?"
Susana started. Five minutes? No wonder this guy's so nasty on the radio. Talk about inferiority complexes.
"Let's try something different," she coaxed. "Drop your pants. I'll do it while you talk."
"We can't," he said. "I have to talk. We're live."
"I won't get in the way of that," she said saucily. "I'll just make it feel good until you're done. Then we'll get into the real fun." She giggled. "It'll be fun anyways, knowing that you're talking to all those people while I'm…well…you know."
"OK," he said. His mustache wiggled again. Susana fought the urge to offer him a piece of cheese. The great Ray Herman, terrorizer of liberals everywhere, turns into a meek mouse in front of a woman in a miniskirt, she thought. That actually wasn't so uncommon, though. But what she had planned for him was.
He opened his pants and sat down behind the mike. Susana took him in her hand and closed her mind to what she was doing. She was grateful for the elbow-length gloves, as it meant she could handle but avoid touching. She moved her hand back and forth gently. Ray Herman moaned in pleasure.
Enjoy it while you can, buddy, she thought.
"OK, we're back! Let's take some calls!" Herman cried out enthusiastically. The powerful voice booming from that tiny frame made Susana recoil. Herman gasped as he went with her.
"Sorry," she murmured.
He waved impatiently at her. She made a face. It didn't matter. He wouldn't be around too much longer.
Herman punched a button on his phone. "Caller, you're on the air," he said.
"Yes, Mr. Herman. My name is Julia, and I can't believe you had the nerve to talk about foreigners like that," a female voice issued from the overhead speakers.
"You can't believe I had the nerve to talk about foreigners like that?" he asked. "I can't believe that NOBODY ELSE has been talking like that about foreigners! I mean, come on!"
"America was built by foreigners," the woman protested.
"Yes, back THEN. We were a production economy then. We needed a lot of slack joes for crappy factory jobs. We're not a production economy anymore, sweetheart. How many factories are there compared to what there were?"
"That shouldn't change-," the woman tried to get in edgewise.
"Oh yes it should. It should change. We're not a production economy anymore. We're a goods-and-services economy. We don't NEED any more people here. We have the right to say no, you know. Do you have the obligation to have sex with all comers?"
"That's got nothing to do with it," the caller protested.
"Yes it does. It's the same. You can say no. You can tell some guy, 'No, I won't have sex with you.'." He winked at Susana, grinning ecstatically. "It's the same with America. We can say, 'No. We don't want you here. Sorry, but that's how it is.'"
Say something about foreigners. Something nasty. I'm begging you, buddy, Susana thought.
"That's how it is. It's all nice and crunchy-munchy to care about people in other countries. But that doesn't mean we pollute our own country by letting everyone in. We let them in when WE need them."
"You--," the caller tried, but Herman was on a roll.
"And one more thing. What's with demanding everything in their own languages? You don't have to speak English to get a driver's license anymore. Think about that. The guy in the next car is not legally obligated to be able to read signs like RIGHT LANE MUST TURN RIGHT. Is that right? Hell, no, I say. If we let the smelly little buggers in, they have to play by OUR rules. Otherwise they can stay in Guadalahoohoo."
Susana decided that was good enough. Her left hand continued in its gentle, pleasing rhythm. Suddenly, it pulled out sharply. Ray Herman gasped.
Susana's right hand flashed out. It described the same arc it had before. The pleasure at Ray Herman's groin suddenly turned into a cold, somehow silvery pain. He screamed and looked down. The flow of blood was immediate and heavy.
Susana stood up and spun him around in the chair. She gave him another moment to appreciate what she had done to him. Then she brought the Harpy close in across his throat. He panicked and got a hand up to block the blade.
There went her no-hitter. Damn.
He screamed again. Susana sank the blade into his gut and ripped up. It was a fatal wound, she knew, but not an instantly fatal one. Good. A few more screams would get the attention of her listeners.
"She's killing me! She's killing me!" Ray Herman screamed. His caller was forgotten. His radio show was forgotten. The Big Apple was forgotten. Only the psychotic girl with the blade was real to him now.
Seven and a half million listeners heard Ray Herman die. There were screams and indescribably wet noises of metal plunging into flesh. The caller began screaming as the sounds grew wetter and Herman's voice dropped off to nothing.
For several seconds, there was nothing but dead silence. Then the smoky voice of a young woman came on the air.
"Mr. Herman was very rude," she said. "Please, we implore you not to be rude. It might save your life someday. This concludes our public service announcement."
Susana clicked off the mike, grabbed her things, and ran from the booth. No one else was in her way; the whole murder had taken only three minutes. She ran from the studio and down the hall.
She banged open the door to the stairs and ran down two flights. She opened that door and hit the hallway. A short distance down was a ladies' room. Susana ran inside the ladies' room and locked herself in a stall.
She removed a Louis Vuitton briefcase from the big hooker purse she had brought with her. Hurriedly, she removed the abbreviated top and miniskirt. She wiped the blood off her with the top, stuffed it in a plastic bag, and put it in the briefcase. From the briefcase, she removed a woman's suit jacket, a skirt, a white blouse, and more sensible pumps than the ankle-breakers that had been a part of the hooker outfit.
She dressed hurriedly and swapped shoes. The Harpy went on its preferred position on the back of her skirt waistband. The jacket covered it nicely. From the inside jacket pocket she took a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
At the bathroom mirror, she hurriedly scrubbed the eye shadow she had liberally caked onto her lids beforehand. She replaced it as quickly as she could with makeup more suitable to a young professional. After all, a girl had to look good.
Ten minutes after entering the bathroom, she was ready. The woman who had entered was instantly identifiable as a cheap and tawdry hooker. The woman who left looked like an intellectual young attorney. Susana strode purposefully to the elevator and punched the button. She stared into the warped reflection of the metal wall, trying to see if there was any blood on her. She saw none.
In the lobby, Susana was met by several police officers running towards the elevator. She shifted her briefcase to her left hand and had her right free for the Harpy. She didn't think she could take down six with a knife, but she would try if she had to.
One of the policemen ran up to her.
"Ma'am," he asked. "Did you see anything suspicious?"
"No, officer," Susana said, blinking behind her glasses. "Why?"
"We've had reports of a murder. Please clear the area."
Susana was more than happy to comply. The streets were thronged with young professionals dressed as she was. No one questioned her. She walked for a block and was ready to hail a cab when a newsstand caught her eye.
The paper in question was the Tattler. Across its top blared a headline that caught her attention.
ALL IN THE FAMILY:AGENT STARLING TRACKS DOWN HER OWN COUSIN.
There was a young blond woman's picture on the left side of the paper. On the right….
Oh my, Susana thought. I can't believe they used that picture.
On the right was a picture of Susana in the Wheeling hospital bed she had occupied two years ago, when Agent Mapp had tried to arrest her and damn near killed her instead. Susana reached into her briefcase and removed a five dollar bill. She bought a copy of it and hailed a cab. The cab driver seemed Hispanic, so Susana tried speaking Spanish to him. When she did, the cabbie lit up and asked her where she was from. She told him and gave him the address to her hotel.
As the cab fought rush-hour downtown traffic, Susana read the article. Her expression changed from angry to fascinated.
Lisa Starling, FBI special agent, is hard at work with her FBI co-workers in tracking her own cousin. Lisa's first cousin, Clarice Starling, disappeared from the FBI almost thirty years ago with infamous serial killer Dr. Hannibal 'the Cannibal' Lecter. Lisa is determined to remove the stain from her family name by bringing to justice the daughter of this unholy relationship: alleged serial killer Susana Alvarez Lecter. Susana is suspected of committing several grisly murders in Chicago two years ago.
"Cousin Lisa," Susana mused. "Who'd have thought?"
In the back of a New York City cab, Susana Alvarez Lecter smiled horribly.